Seductive Nights Trilogy

by Lauren Blakely

  She held up a hand. “Please,” she said firmly. “No pity for me.”

  “It’s not pity.”

  “I mean it, Clay,” she said. “I’m going to be fine. I’ve been in love with you for ten fucking years, and have managed it. Now it’s time I get out of love with you.”

  He sank deeper into the couch, and breathed out hard. “Why didn’t you say something, if you felt that way?”

  She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. Her mouth was set in a firm line. Then she spoke. “I think, deep down, I knew it was unrequited. That even if I told you, I knew that it wouldn’t change a thing. That whatever that kiss was about in college was all it was ever going to be, but it did a number on me.”

  He tilted his head, stared at her as if she were a science project he was in the middle of constructing. “Why? From one kiss?”

  “It was the kiss, but most of all, it was you. I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever met, and smart, and funny, and most of all, you had your act together. You have no idea what my days are like,” she said, with a light laugh. “I love my job. But I spend my days with a lot of messed-up people. And you’re the least fucked-up person I’ve ever known. You don’t have issues. You don’t have baggage. What you see is what you get. For someone who spends all day fixing people, I suppose I really have been longing for someone I didn’t have to fix.”

  “I take it Liam isn’t doing it for you?”

  “See, that’s not fair. How can you be so observant about my feelings for Liam, but so clueless about how I felt for you?”

  “Pretty amazing how I can have blinders on about certain things, isn’t it?”

  “I do like him . . .” she said, then let her voice trail off.

  “But?”

  “But, it’s hard to like someone when you’ve been focused on someone else.”

  “I can understand that,” he said, since Julia was his whole world.

  “You’re madly in love with Julia, aren’t you?”

  “Madly doesn’t even begin to cover it. But we really don’t have to talk about her,” he said softly.

  “I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Talk to me.”

  “I mean it, Michele. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. You need to tell me if it upsets you if I talk about her.”

  “I survived six hours of poker with you having your hands all over her, and watching that dopey look of love in your eyes the whole time,” she said, both teasing and being truthful. “I can handle talking about her. And if I can’t, I’ll let you know.”

  He patted the couch. “Sit next to me.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  “What, are you going to throw yourself at me? I’m strong. I’ll fight you off.”

  “Oh, gee. Thanks.”

  “C’mon. We’re friends, and hell if I’m letting you go over this.”

  She moved off the chair and sat next to him on the couch, tentative in the way she folded her legs up under her, keeping a bit of distance. He took her hand, clasped it in his. “I need plenty of fixing. Trust me on that.”

  “Okay,” she said playfully. “You need Dr. Milo again?”

  “I always need Dr. Milo, but I also need you to know I think you’re an amazing, beautiful person, and you are going to make some man the happiest man on the planet, and you probably won’t need to fix him either.”

  She squeezed his hand, and it felt good, comforting. Like something he didn’t want to lose. “But now you need me to fix something, don’t you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “You just said you’re tired of fixing people all day. I’ll be okay.”

  “I said I don’t want to fix the man I’m going to be involved with. But I think we’ve established that we’re friends. And besides, I have a feeling—call me crazy—that you might really need my help. You screwed things up with Julia, didn’t you?”

  He nodded, guilt written all over his face.

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  He didn’t tell her everything. He’d promised Julia to keep her secrets about her debt. But he told Michele enough about what he’d done. “So what do I do? Just wait for her to decide if she’ll move to New York for me?”

  Michele nodded. “I’m afraid in this situation, patience is going to be a virtue. But I also think you need to find a way to show her that you can fix things. That when a mistake has been made, you can do more than apologize. Show her through your actions, not just your words. Show her you can fix the things that matter to her.”

  And with blinding clarity, he knew what to do.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Julia’s jaw dropped at the mention of all the zeroes. “That’s the size of the prize?”

  Glen Mills nodded and said yes, again and again and again.

  “I won a contest I didn’t even know I was in AND you want to just give me that much money? No strings attached?”

  Glen chuckled, and even his laugh sounded proper. “Well, the string attached is we would very much like to offer you a contract to manufacture the drink in conjunction with Farrell Spirits,” he said, mentioning the name of one of the world’s largest premium drink makers that was home to many top-flight rums, vodkas, gins and whiskeys bottled around the world.

  “Oh my God, like those cosmo and mojito mixes you see in grocery stores,” Kim said with a shriek.

  Julia turned to Kim, and it was like looking in a mirror and seeing a grin as wide as the sea, eyes twinkling, surprise and shock etched across her face. She returned her gaze to the gray-haired gentleman, who’d become something of a Santa Claus. Dropping in unexpectedly, bringing only presents, and a ho, ho, ho. But Santa wasn’t real, and there had to be some loophole he’d spring on her. The devil lived in the details, and bathed himself in fine print. She rearranged her features, fixing a more serious look on her face. “There has to be some kind of catch? Do I have to give up my bar, or my firstborn, or an arm, maybe?”

  Glen laughed, and shook his head. “No, Ms. Bell. We simply want to be in business with you. Farrell Spirits contracted my magazine to embark on a nationwide hunt for the best cocktail and the string attached is that the company would very much like to make it and turn it into a mass-market available product.”

  Chills raced over her skin, goose bumps of sheer possibility. She didn’t know what to do or say. But this must be what it felt like to win the lottery: disbelief of the highest order. “So you want the recipe, of course?”

  “We are going to need the recipe if we agree to the terms, but I assure you it will not be printed in the magazine. It would become a trade secret of course, and Cubic Z can remain the only bar where the drink can be made or ordered fresh.”

  Julia grabbed Kim’s arm in excitement. “Do you have any idea what that would do for our business? It’d go through the roof,” she said, now shrieking. “And that’ll be so good for you and Craig and the baby.”

  “I know,” Kim said, her face glowing.

  “There is one small item though,” Glen said, interrupting, and Julia’s shoulders fell. This was the moment when the devil revealed himself. There was no such thing as a free lunch. Her life was not X-Factor with Cocktails. There would be a catch; there always was.

  “Yes?” she asked through a strangled gulp.

  “Even if you don’t accept the Farrell offer, I will still be writing about this drink in our magazine because it is divine,” he said. “And there are no strings attached to that recognition. I would simply be shirking my journalistic duties to do anything less.”

  Julia’s smile returned. “Far be it from me to turn you into a shirker of duties,” she said, and extended a hand to shake.

  Later that night, when she returned to her home, she couldn’t wipe the damn grin off her face if she’d tried. Because for the first time in a long time, she’d won something based on her skills. Sheer talent alone had made this happen. She wasn’t saving the world, and she certainly wasn’t curing cancer, but she could mix
a damn fine drink, and build a damn fine bar, and no man could ever take that away from her.

  Funny that she hadn’t even known she was a contender, but that made this victory all the sweeter. It was her victory, her prize, and her success. Based on something intrinsic to her that no one, no mobster, no douche of an ex-boyfriend, could ever twist or manipulate.

  As she unlocked the door to her home, she was filled with a sense of pride over a job well done.

  The only trouble was there was someone she desperately wanted to share this moment with.

  She settled for her sister instead. McKenna had just returned from her honeymoon, so Julia called her to tell her the news.

  * * *

  Three days later, McCoy’s was bustling with the usual lunch crowd. This was Midtown Meeting Central, and everyone must have gotten the memo to wear a suit today because the restaurant was packed with sharp-dressed men and women, angling for deals, pitching their wares, hoping to get the person across the table to sign on the dotted line. Clay recognized that hard and hungry look in many of their eyes; he had it himself. Only this time he was hunting out information, and the best purveyor of intel in all of Manhattan was digging into his steak right now.

  “Someday I’m gonna charge you, but for now, let me say this is delish, and I will happily take my payment in the form of a meal,” Cam said, as he stuffed a forkful into his mouth.

  “Like I wasn’t going to pick up the tab. And you know I’d pay you in a heartbeat for your services,” Clay said as he worked through his pasta dish. “But are you ever planning on telling me what you found out?”

  “No. I’m going to eat this steak and run,” Cam joked, with his mouth full. He chewed, and then took a long swallow of his dry martini. He subscribed to the notion that steak was meant to be enjoyed properly with spirits, the time of day be damned. It was one of the very many reasons Clay called this man a friend. He was steady, reliable, amusing as hell, and loved to share his special talent of finding anyone or anything with friends, asking only for the cost of a meal.

  Picking up the tab was nothing if he could deliver what Clay needed.

  Cam wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, then set down his fork and knife for a break from the food. “I’ll put you out of your misery. My guys found him. All those stories Liam was telling about real estate in the Bahamas? You were onto something.”

  Clay’s eyes lit up, and a spark of anticipation ran through him. Could it be this simple? That he’d been found, coincidentally, in the very place where Liam had randomly been asked to buy a condo? “He’s in the Bahamas?”

  Cam scoffed, and waved a big hand. “No. That’d be too easy. What world do you live in? The land of coincidence? He’s not in the Bahamas, but you were right to put all those clues together from what this fucker did. He’s taking pictures of homes.”

  “Exactly what he was doing when he was in San Francisco,” Clay added, raising an eyebrow in question.

  Clay had supplied Cam with the clues, tracking down every last one Julia had ever told him about her ex. He’d shot homes for realtors. His niche behind the camera was making rooms look much bigger, and Dillon had told Julia on their first date that someday he’d be sipping a drink in the Bahamas. Clay had added up those details, alongside Liam’s unexpected recon work, and Charlie’s brief comment at the cafe on Sunday, and went with a hunch that Dillon might be in the islands snapping shots for scams.

  Cam tapped his nose with his index finger. “Bingo. Because here’s the thing about men like that who run scams. They tend to fall back on old habits. They do what works. Whether it’s taking pictures, or conning money. And he seems to have gotten in good with some of the scam artists on a certain island, trying to hustle money selling time-share condos that don’t really exist. His job is to take the pictures of the one good condo, make them look majestic, and the other guys peddle the properties that don’t really exist.”

  “But where is he?” Clay asked, because that was all that mattered, and he damn near wanted to cross his fingers with hope, but he wasn’t a finger crosser. He was a man who knew the law, and knew that when you ran afoul of it there were certain islands where it was better or worse for you to be.

  He hoped to hell that Dillon was in one of those countries that would be worse for Dillon.

  “Can you say Montego Bay? Because if you can, I’ve got the address for where Dillon Whittaker is living now,” Cam said, and slapped a piece of paper on the table.

  Clay grinned, a pure, wicked grin broke across his face as he picked up paper. “God bless Jamaica and its fine extradition laws with the United States of America. Looks like someone is going to need to pay the taxman.”

  Taxes were a bitch.

  * * *

  “So what’s your verdict?”

  “Uncross your legs,” Gayle said.

  “I hardly think uncrossing my legs is the answer to all my romantic woes,” Julia said after telling her stylist most of the details of her situation.

  Gayle winked at her in the mirror as Julia followed orders. “I don’t know, sweetie. Kinda sounds like uncrossing your legs has been working pretty well for you with this guy.”

  Julia laughed. “Fine, you got me on that.”

  “Champion race horse in the sack, right?”

  She covered her mouth with her hand daintily, pretending to be shocked. “Did I say that?”

  “No. But it sure as hell sounds like it, from the stories you’ve told me about his prowess.”

  “Prowess doesn’t even begin to cover it. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I need to know what you think I should do next. A woman can’t make this kind of decision without consulting her stylist.”

  “Don’t consult me,” Gayle said, brandishing her silver scissors playfully in the mirror.

  “Consult the scissors?”

  Gayle shook her head. “Ask the ink,” she said, and tapped her bare arm with the silver scissors, pointing to the cursive letters on her arm spelling out I want to be adored. Julia had always admired the tattoo, even more so because Gayle’s wish for love had come true. Julia leaned in close to the tattoo and whispered, as if offering a plaintive plea to an oracle. “Ink, what should I do?”

  “Allow me to translate for the ink,” Gayle said as she resumed snipping hair. “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you forgive him?”

  When phrased like that, the answer seemed patently obvious. “Yes,” she admitted in a small voice.

  “And most of all, does he adore you?”

  Julia tried to suppress a smile, as if she could hold in all that she felt by not admitting the pure and honest truth. But she blurted it out anyway. “So much.”

  Gayle gave her an approving nod. “One more question. Do you have any idea how devastated I will be to no longer do your hair if you move to New York? Fortunately, I still go there every few months to cut Jane Black’s hair,” she said, mentioning the Grammy-winning rock singer.

  “Name-dropper.”

  “I’ll see if I can squeeze you in after Ms. Black.”

  “Watch it. I’m going to be famous now, too. You’ll have to start calling me Ms. Purple Snow Globe.”

  “You do know that sounds like the name of a vibrator, right?”

  “Which makes it an even better name for a drink. Because when you drink one, it makes you feel like a vibrator does,” Julia said, and cracked herself up, along with her stylist.

  “That should be the marketing slogan. But you don’t need a vibrator with your champion racehorse.”

  “If I take him back,” Julia added, emphasizing that one word. If. Because she had promised herself a week to make this decision.

  Gayle rolled her eyes. “A woman’s stylist always knows.”

  * * *

  All night Julia was tempted to text Clay. To let him know what happened with Farrell Spirits. To tell him which way she was leaning. But she also knew she needed to give this a week. The time apart was less about
him, and more about her. It was about what she wanted in life, but more so, what she needed. As the days had passed with necessary silence, her heart had become clearer. She trusted him. She’d become sure of that. The question remained, though–did she trust herself? Did she have enough faith in her own gut to make the right choice when it came to men? When it came to love?

  As she settled into bed, she glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It blared one-thirty in garish red. Tomorrow would be Saturday, and her self-imposed Clay exile was nearing an end. Only twenty-four more hours until she gave him her answer.

  She reached for her phone so she could reply to McKenna. She and her sister had been texting earlier in the day about getting together for a Saturday girls’ lunch. She hadn’t seen her sister since the wedding, and she missed her something fierce.

  “See you at noon, and get ready for a tackle-hug, because that’s what I’ll be giving you,” she typed.

  Her sister replied seconds later. “You better get ready to receive one too.”

  That left Julia with a big, fat smile. Then she clicked over to her email for one final check before bed, and her heart stopped when she saw his name. The email had been sent a few hours earlier in the evening, and she was only seeing it now. Part of her wanted to berate him, to tell him to give her the space she’d asked for. But mostly, she felt giddy. She missed that man, and the happiness over simply seeing his name in her email was a potent reminder, like someone had underlined it with yellow highlighter, of what she should do.

  from: cnichols@gmail.com

  to: purplesnowglobe@gmail.com

  date: June 7, 10:48 PM

  subject: For You

  Julia,

  I’ve seen enough movies to know that when it comes to romance, the man usually screws up and then makes some sort of big gesture for the woman. The boom box in the rain, the trip to the top of the Empire State Building, or sometimes just flowers, candy, or a note. But you’re not that kind of a woman—the kind who needs or wants flowers, candy, or a note. Though I’ll gladly give you all of that if you let me. But I want to make good on a promise I made to you at your sister’s wedding. I spend my days helping my clients to make more money and to protect their interests. But I can protect you too. And I can give you something I know matters more to you than flowers, candy, or a note. Because I know you, Julia. I know you so well. And what I can do is this—I can right a wrong for you. Please click on the link and you’ll see.